


Confidant

by NanakiBH



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Deception, Denial of Feelings, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Paranoia, Pining, Teasing, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 13:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12631965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: He wondered if those rare moments of peacefulness between them existed just to torment him.





	Confidant

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm just going to write about every daydream I have involving these two just to fill the tag. Like, damn. I have so many ideas. This is a good ship. WAKE UP, PEOPLE.

Before Akechi even opened his eyes, a mild feeling of dread took hold of him. With his eyes still closed, he hurriedly tried to think back to where he was last and what he was doing. At first, it was just a nervous mess; a static-y haze of memories randomly tossed together. As the seconds passed one by one and he forced his heart to calm its rapid pace, he remembered.

But it didn't help. All it did was confirm the bad feeling he had.

Akechi knew he wasn't alone. He occasionally heard the quiet sounds of someone moving their fingers across the flat keys of a laptop keyboard.

He recalled having received a voicemail from Shido and remembered the way the blood drained from his face upon seeing it in his notifications. Normally, he answered Shido's calls immediately. That was what was expected of him. If he wasn't prompt, Shido lost his patience with him, and that wasn't good. Akechi hated answering that man's calls – they were all inevitably about their 'business' – but he hated missing them far more. It was a disappointment not only to Shido, but to himself.

He was supposed to be perfect for him...

In the message, Shido requested that he meet with him as soon as possible. Seeing that the voicemail had been waiting there for an hour, Akechi lost all hope of punctuality.

He abandoned what he was doing (half a coffee at Leblanc) and immediately flew to Shido's office, screaming internally all the way there. Lately, he'd been doing such a good job of following through and meeting Shido's expectations. It was just one slip-up, but it was the pulling of a thread in the intricate web he'd been carefully weaving between him and Shido. To maintain that image of himself in Shido's eyes, he wasn't allowed to look anything less than saintly.

That was ironic, wasn't it?

That seemed to be the theme of his life. Irony.

Just, he really wished that he could always be perfect. Even if that required him to cover himself in blood, he wanted to become the ideal version of himself for him. No one else's definition of perfect mattered to him. Just Shido's.

The perfect Akechi was eager and always willing. He was bright and cheerful but not irritatingly so. He impartially took care of their business but showed great passion for his public persona's detective work. He was, simply, the best of both worlds. A handsomely-performed balancing act. A different character depending on whose stage he graced. Always effortless.

At times, he didn't know why he cared so much about his image.

Wasn't it enough to make Shido trust him...?

Sometimes, if only out of curiosity, he wanted to let the facade slip in front of him. It wasn't his aim to displease Shido, but he wanted to know what he would think of him as the real Akechi Goro.

But he knew. He already knew that Shido wouldn't care about someone who wasn't exactly what he wanted. That was okay, though. For as long as he could stand it, Akechi was willing to be that person for him. And then, if Shido still didn't notice him, it didn't matter.

It didn't matter at all!

Even if there were only one inevitable ending, it was still a happy ending. He was going to be the last thing Shido ever saw. He would remain forever as his real self in those eyes. And then, it was okay if the real Akechi also died inside of him.

Kind of romantic, in a way.

 

Falling asleep in Shido Masayoshi's office totally wasn't romantic, though.

 

Akechi didn't know how he was supposed to dig himself out of that mistake.

 

“Shido-san...?” He did his best to pretend like he was just waking up. He sat up, cutely rubbing at his eyes, and blinked, slowly letting his eyes focus on Shido at his desk. After a moment, accounting for the time it would've taken for him to regain his awareness, he pretended to be surprised about where he awoke. “Wh-... What am I...?” He looked around, holding a hand to his cheek in feigned dismay. “I fell asleep? How embarrassing... You should've woken me up.”

Perfect. A stunning performance.

He seriously couldn't believe he fell asleep to begin with, though. Was it because he didn't have the time to finish that coffee...? He must have been more tired than he realized. As soon as he sat down on Shido's sofa to wait for him, his eyes closed and he slowly sunk into the somewhat stiff, leather cushions and then he just... passed the hell out.

Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary aside from the circumstances of the situation itself. His clothes were still neat and he felt refreshed, so it was unlikely that Shido chose to do anything untoward to him in his sleep. But that was sort of unusual in its own way.

Taking a glance at the windows behind Shido's desk, Akechi saw that the sun had already set. Dread deepening, he looked at his phone.

 

...He slept for three hours?

There? In Shido's office? And Shido hadn't woken him up or done anything to him in that span of time?

 

That didn't sound possible.

 

Shido didn't even look annoyed. He largely seemed to be ignoring him, focused on whatever he was working on. Every now and then, he stopped what he was doing to read what he typed, rubbed a hand tiredly over the back of his head, took a sip of coffee. It was kind of fascinating to watch him. Akechi couldn't place what seemed different, but the Shido in front of him definitely felt different from the one he was used to.

Maybe he just wasn't used to seeing him during a candid moment. Was that it?

Shido couldn't _always_ be terrible...

 

What a terrifying thought.

 

“Uh... Do you still need me?” Akechi asked. He kind of wanted to leave – badly. Although Shido seemed calm, that wasn't always a good sign. Since he was also good at hiding what he was thinking, there was a chance that something terrible was yet to come.

With his eyes still on his screen, Shido sat back in his chair and replied absently, “It wasn't anything urgent to begin with. It's no concern.”

_No concern?_

He wasn't mad?

Shido never contacted him for anything that wasn't necessary.

Akechi put his fingers through his hair to make sure it was still laying straight and neatened up his suit a little, feeling more awkward the longer he sat there. He couldn't make sense of why Shido would have let him stay there, and he was too curious about it to leave before finding out. “Still, falling asleep right here in your office like that... I'm surprised I let myself get that comfortable. This sofa isn't even that soft. Invest in some more comfortable furnishings, would you?”

“So you can fall asleep in my office again?” Shido asked. He remained more or less expressionless even as he glanced aside at him.

“Ah- N-No...” He put his foot in his mouth with that one. The dread was quickly morphing into an overwhelming sense of embarrassment. “Sorry. Just... trying to lighten the mood. It feels stuffy in here. I like you best when you're smiling, Shido-san. You know what I mean?”

Nodding slowly to himself, Shido swiveled his chair toward Akechi. “I see. You want me to tell you 'good morning', is that it?” A mischievous smile widened on his face from one ear to the other. “Good morning, Akechi-kun. Did you sleep well?”

Akechi was just trying to salvage the situation... There was no explanation for what was happening.

Shido was... teasing him?

That smile made him feel weird.

“I did, actually... Thank you,” Akechi said, trying to keep himself from sounding as bewildered as he felt.

“You should be careful with your schedule. Don't forget about your schoolwork. Just because you're a success on TV, that doesn't mean you can be careless and let your academic career suffer,” Shido said. As he spoke, he straightened in his chair and set his fingers back on the keys.

“That's odd, coming from you,” Akechi muttered. Although he'd planned to discreetly extract the truth from him, Shido's suspicious behavior had reached a level that couldn't go without being directly questioned. “Are you lecturing me?”

“It might have been a mistake for you to make yourself look so perfect. Any small slip-up will cause suspicion. The school board can be persistent when the personal lives of their top students interfere with their performance. They'll be afraid that you'll make them look bad.”

“Ah...”

Was his concern really about the school, though? It made sense, but...

Slip-up...?

Was Shido referring to the way he fell asleep in his office? How late he'd responded to his voicemail? Those were definitely mistakes as far as Akechi was concerned. He was always concerned with making himself look perfect in front of him, but Shido was telling him in no uncertain terms that he didn't _have to_ always look perfect.

So did that mean that Shido _knew_ he wasn't what he presented himself to him as?

No, he had to be overthinking things...

 

“What do you plan on doing after you graduate?”

 

Akechi almost swallowed his tongue. Shido seemed to be looking for every way to surprise him.

Once he got over the initial shock that Shido was even asking him something like that, Akechi attempted to come up with a suitable answer. It was hard, though. Everyone his age was expected to have the answer to that question figured out already, but he just didn't know. The future was always ambiguous in his eyes. He couldn't imagine it. The world before him consisted of him and Shido and nothing else. After he followed through with his plan to kill him at his peak, he would be the only one left, and he didn't really care about himself or what the future looked like after that.

Shido was kind of like... his reason for everything.

That made him sound so important, though. Akechi didn't like that at all...

He just wanted him to be gone. He wanted everything to be gone. He wanted to be gone, too.

It would've been fine if they just died and the entire world disappeared along with them like one big nightmare. But he couldn't quite phrase it like that. He didn't want to make Shido feel concerned.

Akechi placed his hands on his knees and looked straight ahead at Shido, answering confidently. “I don't see a need to change, and I don't really want to assume anything about the future when the present itself is uncertain, so I'll probably just be doing the same thing I've been doing.”

Shido made a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

Akechi wished that he would say something. He wanted to know why he'd asked him about it at all. It was too hard to believe that he was just concerned about him maintaining his image in front of other people, and when it came to his plans for the future, there was no reason for him to be curious.

Was he going to ask him if he wanted to stay with him? To be there?

Even if he had to end up doing the same thing – killing indiscriminately for him, eliminating his enemies...

Even if that were truly his one and only use, then...

Then, at least the future would've been clear.

Just thinking about Shido expressing his appreciation made Akechi's heartbeat quicken. Clutching his knees, he took a deep breath to try to calm himself so he could continue, eager to hear him say more.

“By the time I graduate, this will be your country, so I suppose I do have one thing to look forward to,” he said cheerfully, beaming brightly.

For some reason, after he said that, Shido looked at him strangely, his brows raised, mouth slightly agape. It was like he was surprised by something he said. But Akechi didn't feel intimidated anymore. The atmosphere felt unusually light and comfortable.

With a curious smile, Shido pushed up his glasses. “You really _do_ admire me, don't you?”

Although he was immediately ready to respond, Akechi stopped, realizing that what Shido asked wasn't a question.

He was simply stating a fact.

“...Of course.” The corners of his smile quivered unsteadily. A real smile wasn't as easy to hold together as a fake one, he discovered. It was too easily affected by emotion.

“You should get more rest.”

“Here?” Akechi asked, his heart resuming its nervous pounding.

“Preferably at your own place, I'd think.”

“O-Oh. Right. Yeah, obviously.”

 

Really, what was he thinking?

Shido surely didn't care about him.

 

But if it were possible...

 

“Alright,” Akechi said as he pushed himself up and began heading to the door. A part of him wanted to apologize to Shido for missing his call and for falling asleep in his office, but he didn't want to remind him of all of the ways he'd failed. Instead, when he reached the door, he just looked back with a smile. “Call me when you need me again. Good night, Shido-san.”

Resting back, putting his cheek in his palm, Shido gave him an amused smile in return. “Yeah. Good night, Akechi-kun.”

 

It didn't matter if he was being sincere or not.

If only there were a way for Shido to always be that way...

 

But no one knew better than Akechi how meaningless the words 'if only' were.


End file.
